Episode 161: The Power To Do, Be or Create Anything In Your Life with Gail Goodwin

[INTRODUCTION]

 

 

[00:00:29] Jon: Achieve Your Goals podcast listeners, Jon Berghoff here standing in for Hal Elrod. Hey, I wanted to tell you a little bit about the conversation that you are about to listen in on.  This was a conversation that I had with a dear friend and one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever known, Gail Goodwin. This conversation and I don’t wanna spoil any of the stories for you. You’re going to realize really quickly. Gail is an incredible human being with real-world stories that are gonna inspire you to embrace adventure. They’re gonna inspire you to live big and one little explanation this conversation was recorded as part of a masterclass series that Hal and I run for a private mastermind group of our so if you hear us referencing our Quantum Leap Mastermind Group or any kind conversation that sounds a little confusing, now you know, it was recorded in a separate meeting environment but it was so powerful we thought we have to bring this conversation to you, our Achieve Your Goals podcast community. I hope you enjoy.

 

[00:01:35] Jon: Alright, Quantum Leap Mastermind members, welcome to another edition of our exclusive Quantum Leap Mastermind live webinars. Today we have Gail Goodwin and for those of you that are not here live, I just have to say this that before we started to call, Brianna Greenspan, QLM’r stated that just getting to be on this call made this year worth it for her because Brianna had just pointed out that she has had Gail’s Inspire Me Today app on her phone for years and years. And so today, she get to meet Gail and we’re all hanging out here together. Live if you hear live and if you hear recorded, that’s great too. I wanna make just a personal comment about how unique and special this is to bring Gail to this community. And if we can, if we could find a way at some point in the future and I can’t make any promises because Gail has a lot going on in her world. I wanna get her to one of our live for treats. It wasn’t gonna work for this event in March but I’m saying that it kind of apply like a friendly positive pressure to Gail to get her to one of our live Mastermind or treats. But I wanna share that I was introduced to Gail and at some point today Gail we’ve gotta share this story because if you’re a Quantum Leaper and you believe in synchronicity or you believe in fate or destiny or mysticism or mythology or any other spirit that exist that is invisible and hard to explain. I will tell you that the way I was introduced to Gail which was actually through Hal Elrod and what unfolded after meeting her is nothing short of a magical example in my mind of how amazing the world is when we are in these moments where we’re present enough to follow the signals that people and places are sending to us.

 

So Gail at some point will reveal that story how I first met you. Maybe we start with that and you can tell me what you would like to do but I want to make sure we find out a lot about Inspire Me Today because Gail you were doing something on the internet like a decade before the rest of us got into internet and because of that I know you’ve been awarded and recognized as being one of the most influential people on the internet, one of the most inspirational and as through the work you’ve done with Inspire Me Today so we gotta talk about that. And I knew you have some other incredible stories about how you’ve chosen to live life.

 

I see Mike McCarthy, he’s the head of our GoBundance Mastermind program. One of their mantras is “grabbing life big”. I don’t know if I know anybody that has grabbed life bigger than you, Gail so I’m super prompt to have you here. Where do you wanna start? Do you wanna start with Inspire Me Today journey? Do you wanna start with How You and I Met? Whatever you want.

 

[00:04:27] Gail: Why don’t we jumped in with Inspire Me Today since that’s kind of where you started and then we can go from there.

 

[00:04:30] Jon: That’ll be awesome. Tell us how Inspire Me Today came about.

 

[00:04:35] Gail: It came about, they say find a problem and solve it. That to me was really what Inspire Me Today was all about. I had no intention of starting a website. I’m just one of those type A personalities that when I find somebody or something that I love and I wanna learn more, I’m like this constant sponge and I kept looking and looking and I love Jack Canfield. I love Wayne Dyer. I love all these guys. But I don’t want the same one everyday. I want something new and fresh and new ideas and people that I had not yet been introduced to so I started looking for it and I couldn’t find it. So I thought, hmm, I’m going to start a website and I had the concept in my head of exactly what I was going to do and I’m going to digress here for a bit Jon, if that’s alright.

 

[00:05:21] Jon: Yeah. Please do.

 

[00:05:22] Gail: It’s kind of one of those things that if you wanna make the universe laugh, make really concrete plans of what you’re going to do, that’s what I did and then I thank God, laughed and said, “Hey, guess what, my daughter graduated from college.” She’s always had this amazing angelic voice and when she graduated from college she called me and she moved to Nashville and she said, “Mom, I wanna write a song together.” I said, “Great, okay.” We fought about different topics and we talked about, but neither of us were songwriters. I went to bed at night and I woke about two o’clock in the morning and I always have my little journal with me and I heard her sing a song to me in a  dream. I am not a songwriter. I cannot write music. So I just put dots for where the music is meant to go to lyrics down and then the morning I called her I said, “Honey, I’ve got a song for you.” She’s like,”Mom, you’re a real-estate developer. Keep your day job.” “What are you talking about?” and I said, “but seriously, you sang this to me over and over last night.” And she just beat me up and said, “Look, I live in Nashville. I will find songwriters. Thanks, Mom but no thanks.”

 

I got on an airplane and I flew to Nashville and said, “You really need to listen to this because this is not my song. This is your song. You sang this to me. All I did was write it down. She went into the studio later that day, recorded that song with the help of Mark Victor Hansen and Alex Mandozi  and we released it as an audio postcard on the internet. It had… And this was 10 years ago, more than half a million downloads in the first month. It’s not as impressive now but when you look where we were 10 years ago, internet wise, it was incredibly impressive but from that we got invitations.

 

The song was written from a soldier’s wife perspective. So Jon what you were just saying about Iraq really touched my heart as far as your previous guest that you had in last week. In that the name of the song, if anybody wants to hear it or google it, it’s called, “Baby Come Back Home” by Carly Goodwin  and that song touched the hearts of so many military families that the invitation started coming in and we spent the next two years entertaining our troops at over a hundred bases throughout the United States. Three trips down to Guantanamo Bay and it was at GTMO the very first trip down there. It was during the time of the prison trials  if you remember that wayback when in the news. And one of the marine said to me, “I’m surprised you guys even have the courage to come down here or even care. Americans hate us. I said, “No, we don’t.” We may disagree with the political administration, we may disagree with policies but you’re our brothers and our uncles and our sisters and our cousins. You’re family to us. Of course, we love you and we support you. He went, “Ha, prove it.”

 

I left that interaction with this marine really touched with how can I as one person let them know that the sacrifices that they’re making are so genuinely appreciated by all of us. A week later, an opportunity, we were back in Nashville and an opportunity presented itself and it was, it’s called Fan Fair and it’s the country music association’s largest event each year with fifty thousand people coming to it. Carly, my daughter had a booth fair and we decided, let’s just go get a Scroll. The newspaper that the paper that newspaper is printed on, unroll it and see what happens. So I invited people as they were walking by threw out a handful of Sharpie’s and just write whatever message love and support you want and we will send it down to that guy in Guantanamo Bay. We had lines Jon for four days. We kept running back and getting more Scrolls and more scrolls and by the end of four days it exceeded seven miles long.

 

[00:08:59] Jon: Wow.

 

[00:08:59] Gail: It’s like wow. On the very last day, one of the gentleman asked me, he’s looking at these piles of scrolls that we had, he said, “What are you gonna do with this?” and I said, “We’re going to take them right to Iraq to where they matter the most and let our sons and daughters, our fellow countrymen know how much they are loved, supported and appreciated. And my daughter just looked at me and said, “You’re gonna what?” and I said, “Honey, I have no idea where that came from but I think we’re going to Iraq. I had no idea where it came from. It was just an inspired idea that happened in that moment. So then I thought, okay, how does one get to Iraq in the middle of a war torn situation. You don’t just, hey, I’m gonna fly to Iraq and take these scrolls with me.

 

So I thought, well, if I want us to be successful, if I were to be successful in creating this what would the first step be and took that first step and then from one to the next to the next. Few months later, we were in Iraq. We spent a month there visiting 18 bases and delivering these scrolls. And at the time right before we left, we were at the Rotunda in the capital building in Washington and congress took a break and came out and Congress signed it. And then we took it to Iraq and at that point, it was 18 and half miles long and so if you had told me, “Hey, I want you to write a song and create an 18 and half mile long love letter to our troops and find a way to spend a month on Iraq” I would have said, “Jon, I can do a lot of things but that’s crazy. There’s no way I can do that.” And yet, by taking just one step after the next it all unfolded. But this brings me circle right back around to Inspire Me Today.

 

The very first place we visited was a base called, “Alchime.” It is three miles from the Syrian border in Northwestern Iraq and it was a base that had never had entertainment because no one as they put it was, dumb enough, to go there. It was a very remote place and there were still building the stage for Carly when we got there. But anyway, in Alchime, there were about 3,600 marines there and I think four of them might have been women, all the rest are men. And so, at the end of her concert a young boy came running up to me and said, “Excuse me ma’am, may I ask a huge favor?” and I said, “Sure, what do you need? Anything.” And he said, “Can I have a mom hug?” and it was like, “Ah. Wow! Of course, you can have a mom hug.” And so I gave him his hug and he buries his head in my neck and he started crying and he said, “You smell like home.” He said, “This is the first time I’ve been touched in 9 months and four days.” And I’m thinking, “Wow! How do you do that?” Well, I’m sorry let me go back just a moment, just before the hug, he said to me, “I haven’t had a shower in 37 days but can I still have my hug?” and I said, “Of course” and gave him the hug. And then afterwards I was curious and asking, “This is a really modern great base. Why have you not had a shower in 37 days?” and he explained that he lived in a ditch three miles away on the Syrian border and guarded his section of that sand for 30 to 40 days at a time until his replacement came and he is alone. And I’m thinking, “I had a hard time living in my house for 30 days with zero interaction with anyone, how do you do it?” and he reached back in his backpack and he pulled out an mp3 player and he said, “I am always looking for good inspiration Ma’am. Do you know where I could find some each day?” and honestly, it was like God was tapping me on the shoulders saying, “Do you remember that name you booked two years ago inspiremetoday.com?” and I had that domain for two years and did nothing with it until that day and that’s when I realized, “Okay. I’m not the only one that needs that kind of inspiration.”

 

And so when Carly and I came back to the States we hired a manager for her. I left my management record industry job with her and founded Inspire Me Today. So that’s the story of where it came from and why.

 

[00:12:55] Jon: Wow! What an amazing story and I love the chain of events that you just brought us through Gail from the song to writing the love letter. And I tried to capture this, I love the question that you asked which was, if we were to be successful, what would the first step be? I thought, what a great question for us to ask even when you speak out loud some sort of crazy goal, will if it were to were what would the first step be all the way through to being inspired to then move forward with Inspire Me Today? What an amazing story.

 

So that’s the origin story for inspire me today. Bring us up to speed a little bit about what then unfolded you since have gone on to interview hundreds maybe thousands of as you refer to them, “luminaries” and many us have seen that that list includes some people that many of us considered to be some of the most well-known luminaries in the world. What have been some of the most interesting or inspiring interviews? That’s my first question and then I guess connected to that, what are some of the lessons, big lessons, that have stuck out from all of these incredible people that you’ve had a chance to meet?

 

[00:14:10] Gail: I have been so blessed and that people say yes and many folks will ask me how do you know this person? How did you get this interview? And for me, it’s just pick up the phone and call them. Send them an email and ask. People say, “I can’t do that” it’s like if you don’t do that, your answers already no. If you do, do that you’ve got at least a 50/50 chance that they’re going to say yes. I’m going to go back again Jon and share one other story with you that I think might be relevant to your group. I am a big believer of celebrating in advance. Before it happens, celebrate it and get that energy going of yes and if you see any bouncing it’s because I always sit on a big bouncy ball because I think that that keeps the energy flowing as well. That when I had Inspire Me Today up in running I mean at this point we featured thousands of people, our inspiration goes out through our affiliate partners to about 34 million people every morning and it’s still free to the luminary. It’s also free to anyone to just jump on and be inspired.

 

What I knew that my two favorite people in the world that inspired me personally were Guy Laliberté who is the founder of Cirque du Soleil and Richard Branson of Virgin. And I thought, “Alright, how does a nobody like me get to somebody like that and have them say, yes because I must get tons of inquiries?” and so a girlfriend of mine, one of my luminaries named Kristin, contacted me and said, “Hey. I’m doing a happy dance guru video and I need you to go to your best happy place in Montana.” I’m looking out my window here at this valley and trees and the smell. She said, “I want you to go to your favorite place and do your happy dance on video for me. Will you do that?” and I said, “Yeah. Sure, I’ll do it for you.” So she called me that Friday and said, “Hey. Today’s my deadline, did you forget? I didn’t get your video yet.” And I was going through upside down short sales in Las Vegas. I’m crashing up properties. It was a nightmare time in my life. And I’m thinking, “I don’t want to do this today. I don’t want to act like I’m happy and do a happy dance” which is obviously exactly what I needed. So I said to my husband, “I’ve already promised Kristin I’ll do this. Will you drive me down to a ranch that I used to own which is the biggest most gorgeous vista that I know of. So I called the new owner and said, “Can I come down?” and he said, “Ah! I’m not even there. Head on over and have at it.” So I went to the back meadow of this property. This bittersweet property that I used to own and there in the middle of 300 acres of nothing is a trampoline and I was like, “Hmmm. Alright.” So Daryl, my husband who you’ve met Jon, just goes “Oh yeah. Get up there.” And so I jumped up on the trampoline and I’m jumping up and down and he said, “Come on. Give me your happy dance.” Well, I’m jumping up and down but I’m just not feeling it and he yells out, “Richard Branson just emailed you and he wants to meet you and he’s invited you over to his house to do an interview. Show me what that looks like.” And I was hooting and hollering and dancing and screaming and then he yells, “And Guy Laliberté called” and he went through the whole thing. 30 minutes later, we had a killer video. It only needed to be 30 seconds but I was jumping and screaming and celebrating. I got back from that meeting about two hours later drive back to our house. Two things happened while I was up on that trampoline, want to guess what they were?

 

[00:17:27] Jon: Naaah, no way!

 

[00:17:29] Gail: Yeah, way! Richard Branson emailed me personally saying, “I got your email and I’d loved to invite you over the next time you’re in the BVI, hop over for a glass of rum. And I was like, “Oh my god!” And then the phone rang and it was Guy Laliberté’s assistant, Rene Claude, and she said, “I have worked for Guy for 11 years. He gets approximately 29 to 32 inquiries per day. He has turned down everyone consistently for the last seven years. He’s not taking one interview. He just called me into his office and said, “Do you remember that Inspire Me Today girl? Will you find out more and book that interview. I want to talk to her.” He left the following day for Star City Russia and was training to be with the cosmonauts at the facility in Star City Russia to blast off to this international space station. He called me from Star City Russia and we spent two and a half hours on the phone doing that interview and then he called and ask for questions from the international space station. How cool does that get? And for me, this all happened because I was dumb enough, brave enough, however you want to put to think that I had chance for them to respond. And I celebrated it in advance as if they did and took that step and hot damn, they did. I mean he said yes and those two were probably my most favorite interviews not only because of how it happened but because of who they are as people as well.

 

And you also asked me Jon the underlying theme. I think the underlying theme that I’ve gotten came from many as pieces and it’s basically we’re here to live this life. Go have fun with it. If you can realize that the only difference between fear and excitement is whether you’re not breathing and what I mean is when we get frightened and fearful and it just exacerbate the whole situation versus… Take a deep breath and think of the what if being what if good stuff happens? So often we think of what if bad stuff happens and Mike I understand you played big Jon mentioned that earlier. One of the things that a friend of mine, Gay Henderson, Gay said to me, I can remember meeting with Gay and interviewing him at his home in Ohio probably six, seven years ago and I was going through another real estate development and Gay asked me, “How’s it going?” and I said, “It’s a little scary at times.” And he burst out laughing and he said, “It should be” and I said, “What do you mean?” and he said, “If you’re not scared, you’re not playing big enough.” And that has really stuck with me and so rather than feeling that that fear is something that is to be pushed aside and never dealt with. To me it’s like, “Oh yeah. I’m in the big leagues. This is working. I’m making a difference.” I think the more we step out our comfort zone, the bigger difference we can make in the world. Hopefully that answers your question Jon.

 

[00:20:31] Jon: That is really awesome. Just listening here, I so much appreciate the idea of celebrating something in advance. What I like about that is it’s not just we should see it in advance which in and out itself I think we all benefit if we can build a habit of visualizing. In a distant plane, trying to see the future but I think there’s a big difference between just seeing it and actually celebrating it…

 

[00:20:57] Gail: There totally is. Even with my vision board upstairs on our bedroom, you can stand there in the morning and go, “yeah yeah yeah” and that’s it or you can say, “I already have that. I already have that. Yes! Yes! Yes!” and the more you get physically involved with jumping up and down, celebrating. It changes the vibration of every cell in your body to attract to that what is out there that you are desiring. And it just it brings you so much faster. It’s the same way I met my husband. So I can tell you this works brilliantly and it amazes me that more people are not tapping into the power that they have inside and using it for your own benefit. It’s there. Go for it.

 

[00:21:40] Jon: Gail, when I first met you I want to share this story of how we met. So I want to share this story with everybody because when we were first introduced it was through our good friend, Hal Elrod and this was maybe 2008. Hal called me and said, “JB, I know this woman named Gail Goodwin” and I at that time didn’t know who you were anything about and she said she invited me to go on a private sailboat through the British Virgin Islands and he happen to know that’s one of my favorite places in the world and that when I was young my parents took me sailing in the British Virgin Islands. I went on a trip with Mara, my wife, there. And he knew that I love that place and so he called and said, “Hey! If you’re interested I’ll connect you with Gail and see where that could go.” He wanted to basically give me his spot because I think that they were expecting their first child or something and couldn’t quite make the trip.

 

And I’ll never forget, the part of why I want to share this story is because one, this is an example of you living out, really designing an epic life where your life and your business and fun and your work are all one in the same. The way that you did this where you essentially lived on a boat for whatever, four weeks out of the year and invited people to come network together and I was just thinking it was amazing. But there’s fascinating story that maybe a few of you have heard me share, I’ve never had the chance to share it in your presence Gail with others around so this is kind of fun to share this. But when I was invited to go on that trip, I spoke with you about it and that was the time of my life where the financial investment to go on that trip with something I had to really think carefully about. I would say it was not an inexpensive trip to go on and I had to follow my intuition. I guess you could say it was parted your intuitive capability rubbing off on me because I thought to myself, “We’re going to do this. We’re going to go on this trip.” So we went on the trip, you and I became great friends. I think was Mara with me on that first trip? Yeah, we were together. We met you and Daryl and two other couples on this beautiful sailboat. We spent a little over weeks sailing from island to island to island just living in an incredible life and having amazing conversations. I’ll never forget on the trip, I thought to myself, “Well, this was worth more than I ever could have spent.” Yet, what’s really interesting is months and months later, I was off doing my thing and I was at that time running my own sales training business and Vitamix was a client of mine.

 

I can remember I was trying so hard to get not just one foot in the door but two feet in the door to do more and more work for Vitamix because that was a great client. I loved everything about them. I love their product and I was at one of their sales conferences where I knew that Jodi Berg, the CEO, was going to be there. And I didn’t know her really well at that time but I knew that if I had the chance to get a little bit of time with Jodi maybe I could get her to be more interested, more curious about me and what I do and who knows where that could lead to. Well, what ends up happening is where the JW Marriott in Orlando. And I’ll never forget this, the meeting is ending in the first day and I in the most manipulative way possible, position myself in a Starbucks that I knew Jodi would have to walk by between the meeting room and her hotel room like to go get ready for dinner. And I thought if I sit right here, if she walks by I might be able to get her to sit down and convince her to hire me for more work that was my train of thinking. And exactly as I thought it could happen, she walks through, the last person to walk by. And she sees me and I invited her in to have a cup of tea and I knew that I had a small window like 20, 30 minutes if I was going to get her to even sit down. She sat down. We started having a conversation and I’m going to admit to this group that I did not start that conversation looking back the way that I would do it today. I took an approach that was not really mature. It was an approach that was selfish. It was, how do I get her interested in me? And of course, you’re the kind of group that knows the real key to that is to be interested in her. But I was so insecure and nervous and I knew this was a rare opportunity.

 

I’m trying to get her interested in me with 25 minutes into this conversation. It’s not working. She’s very politely, respectfully engaging with me. But it’s not opening up the conversation the way I thought it could and there’s a little voice in my head that says, “Wait a minute. Why don’t you do what you’ve probably taught to others and what you know is the right thing to do and why don’t you ask another question or two about Jodi maybe unlock something that matters to her and see what that could lead to.” So I literally had a minute left because we knew we’re out of time we go to dinner. I said, “Jodi, we just spent half hour here is there any goal that you have or obstacle that you’re facing that you would love to figure out how to solve right now? Just in case, there’s any possibility I or anyone I know could help you? Is there anything you’re trying to do?” she says, “You know what Jon, I appreciate you asking that in that way because yeah there’s actually something that is so pressing it’s like this one thing that’s nagging at me.” There I am embarrassed, I just spent 30 minutes and how did I not get to this one thing that mattered most to her, right? She goes, “Yeah, there’s this one thing.” She goes, “I have been wanting for so long.” Keep in mind Vitamix, at the moment that conversation was an 89-year old company started by her great grandfather and she said, “I’ve always wanted to have coffee table book to celebrate our 90th year anniversary.” And she had a vision for it, she said, “I want to have somebody go out and interview customers and from kids to spouses to athletes to chefs and ask them to share their stories so we could turn it into the most beautiful coffee table book.”

 

And I will admit again that that she’s saying that I’m thinking, “Oh! This is me. I’m going to make this happen.” But in that moment, there was a part of me that thought, “I know I’m not really able to handle that project right now but I thought I know someone who is.” And I said, “Jodi, would you be open to me introducing you to a woman named, Gail Goodwin. She founded a website called, “Inspire Me Today.” And literally as I’m describing Gail, for the first time in our conversation Jodi’s now taking notes. She says, “Yeah! I’d loved to meet this woman.” So I called Gail, I created an introduction. Gail meets with Jodi. They become friends. Vitamix hires Gail to lead out this project and I’m super proud to say that Gail crushed it and I can now hold in my hand the 90th year anniversary, 90 years of inspiration and the name of the book was, “Gratitude” and all throughout this book are stories.

 

Again, this is what Gail is exceptional at this capturing stories. It starts with the story of Vitamix and Jodi’s family and how over 90 years they built this company and then it goes on to have photographed stories, the families whose lives were transformed because of the Vitamix and it’s this beautiful book. Now there’s two things about this story that are crazy. Two things that are absolutely crazy. Number 1: This is all before I joined Vitamix to head their sales. When I eventually joined Vitamix to head their sales and I sat down with our biggest customers and we were negotiating 10, 50, a hundred million dollar opportunities of all the fancy marketing literature that our company spent I don’t know hundreds of thousands of dollars producing. Guess what the one item was? That was the only item that I brought to every single meeting that I went to. It was this book. This book did more for me to help me close deals with the largest retailers in the world than anything else that our marketing department ever created. So that’s the crazy part number 1.

 

Crazy part number 2 is at the end of the project, Gail reached out to me and on her own she said, “Jon, you know in our world when someone refers a piece of business like this it’s a standard thing to pay a referral fee.” And I said, “Hey. I’m delighted if you want to pay me a referral fee.” And the check that Gail sent to me and I didn’t know what it was going to add up to. But I will tell you that very close to the dollar, it was exactly what I spent to go on that first boat trip in the British Virgin Islands with Gail.

 

[00:30:00] And so I shared that story with all of you because there are so many amazing synchronicities and coincidences whatever you call them, but it’s just one more example Gail of how things in your life seem to have amazing endings to these stories and so I’d love if you want to either share with everyone a little bit about your boat adventures or one of the reasons I wanted to have this call today is because when I was talking with you last month I realized you have another one of these adventures and I thought on the phone I almost like booked all of it to extend to our QLM Group. But I wanted you to introduce your next big adventure and also to talk about one of your other crazy projects which is your… the first in the world tree house ski in ski-out homes that you’re building right now in Montana so talk about anything you want…

 

[00:30:53] Gail: Let’s talk about the boat thing, because Jon I love you and for you to have group like this is so exciting. For me sailing is one of my favourite things to do, being on the water is one of my favourite things to do. But when you can do that with people that you can actually sit down and have a heart to heart, real conversation where you can help make a difference in their life and you can connect this one to that one and this one to that one, magic happens. It happens the same way as it did on the one you were on. So I guess the easiest way to put it is I still go on the little boats but I have so many people that want to come…

 

[00:31:29] Jon: The big boat.

 

[00:31:31] Gail: Well yeah, it’s a big boat in perspective if you compare it to a little one where you were on. You were on a 51-footer, this is 344 feet but it is all inclusive, super high end, super upscale, I would say six star without exaggerating. I have never in my life, you know, from staying at the Ritz to the Four Seasons to wherever else, never had the level of decadence that I have when I do this. Last year, my husband and I in November flew to France and to the south of France through the French Riviera Spanish and Portuguese Riviera and then from there stayed on the boat and did the transatlantic crossing back to Barbados and so it was just three weeks on a ship like this and again 344 feet but there’s only a hundred people on the boat. So it’s like having your own private yacht and when I first put this on my vision board eight or nine years ago when I found Sea Dream for the first time, it was on my vision board for seven years until my daughter-in-law finally said, “You called them?” and I said, “No, they’re too expensive”. She said, “Have you called them?” I said, “No, they’re too expensive” and then she said, “Call me back after you do ” and she hung up on me. She also was my CEO for Inspire Me Today for six years, she’s… this is your influence, it’s your fault I’m talking to you like this and so I called them and they were running a special and we ended up booking that trip and it was the most amazing vacation I’ve ever taken and again we’re surrounding yourself with amazing people so I was so blown away by that, that I said, “Hey, Sea Dream I want to book this boat” and they said, “well, we make everybody start off but you’ve got to book 20 cabins first.

 

[00:33:11] There are only 50 on the boat and they won’t let you book more than half of the boat unless you book the whole boat” So I said, “Great. I’ll take 20” so I still have about 14 openings for a trip in April of 2018. It is a round trip Barbados to Barbados. I have sailed in my little boat the islands from Puerto Rico down to Venezuela probably a hundred times I’ve been down there. So I know these islands and the best thing… the reason we picked this specific trip is it is all of my favourite islands on this one trip. It’s eight islands in seven days and I can promise you, you will have not ever experienced anything remotely close to the level of decadence that Sea Dream and so if you interested on make sure Jon gets a link and you have contact information. You are welcome to call me, you are welcome to e-mail me, I would be honoured to have you join our group and meet a bunch of other incredibly amazing people and if by any chance you are single and you don’t know who to bring with you don’t let that stop you, we’ll match you up with somebody else who’s awesome who you may not even know but we only take amazing people, that’s my criteria and so it ends up being about… right now we’ve got a window of opportunity for the next two weeks until the end of February. It’s about $3,200 per person everything’s included and we’re talking liquor, food, everything. This is the kind of place that if you are sitting by the pool going from point A to point B they’ll come over, spritz you with water, take your sunglasses, clean your sunglasses and hand them back to you while someone else is serving you a cocktail and it’s like… I’ve just never known this.

 

My very favourite part is if you like camping… this is luxury camping… the entire top deck has eight double beds and then the front half of the ship of the yacht, its two king-sized beds put together in a Balinese bed and you can sleep out under the stars and you get your own personalized monogram pyjamas, make you literally are sleeping out under the stars in the middle of the ocean. I’ve never seen anything like it.

 

So I would invite you to join us and again it’s one of those kind of things that you may be you going, “Yikes! $3,200 that’s expensive.” Look at who you might meet and the experience and the connection Jon, you and I have this… I mean this is exactly what happens every single time when we get on these boats. I’ll ask the group that comes with me, “Okay. What is your number one biggest obstacle that you’re dealing with now and help that you need?” or if you use your magic wand, you could go “Poof, I want this opportunity” what is that opportunity? Share it with everyone else and people say to me, “How do you do this? You pick the absolute best person for me to connect with? I just laugh and say, “I put it out there” right people show up and at the end of the week everyone comes to me and says, “My magic dynamite blew up that obstacle and my magic wand gave me this opportunity and this is so cool and they’ve paid for the trip. And so to me it’s about playing bigger, it’s about living bigger, it’s about putting yourself in a place where the magic can happen. So you are invited to come do that with us. All of you, just let me know sooner rather than later because I can’t take more than those 20 rooms and we’re almost there so…

 

[00:36:31] Jon: This is amazing. By the way, I’m just going to speak for myself. When you said the price, it could have been $10,000 more and I still would have thought this might be a great deal… That’s kinda crazy.

 

[00:36:42] Gail: But if you call Sea Dream directly it is 10,000 more. This is my deal for booking 20 and I’m passing the savings right on to you guys.

 

[00:36:51] Jon: It’s amazing so we want to know who bought the other five cabins because we’re going to buy the other 14.  So send us a list of those five cabin purchasers can interview us to decide if they want us to join them.

 

[00:37:05] Gail: It’s not even up to them, it’s up to the universe. The right people will show up, I can tell you that the last one of this that we did we’ve had Jody, the president of Vitamix has been with us before. We’ve had one of my favourites who is a Catholic priest, he’s now 75 years old, he was the number two guy under Pope Jon Paul in the Vatican for five years. We just had such an eclectic range of people from entrepreneurs to inventors. We had a guy who did one of the spacewalk landings. I mean we just got amazing people and you think that “what do I have in common with that guy and how can he help me?” Jon, it’s kind of one of those things that… go back to your Jody conversation at the coffee shop, when you ask yourself, “how can I be of service to that person?” it becomes just slamming right around at you with something that benefits you and everybody’s issues seem to go away and the opportunities expand. So we’re incredibly jazzed to be doing this and on top of it, a little icing on the cake, this trip that we picked is specifically the islands, I picked it geographically, not time of year, not anything else but where I wanted to go, of my favourite islands because there is nothing like these seven little islands and it happens to coincide with the 10th wedding anniversary for my husband and I and the 10th anniversary for the launch of Inspire Me Today. So we’re going to do a little 15, 20 minutes ceremony on the beach with caviar and champagne and you’re all invited to the ceremony as well.

 

[00:38:37] Jon: That’s awesome. That is really cool.

 

[00:38:39] Gail: So that’s coming up there but now let me go back to where are we now. I live in North Western Montana and it is… my heart… I found home when I found this place, I was born back East but moved to Montana back… guess I’ve had land here since the early ‘90s and always wanted to figure out a way to be able to afford to live here because it’s so just unbelievably gorgeous. We found that property about three and a half years ago, bought it, tore down the old cabin that was there and this for me was one of the scariest… again I’m saying scary, scariest times of my life, oh my gosh we thought we were going to spend 350,000 and buy this cabin and what do you mean I now have to tear it down and build something else and I don’t have the funds to do that and where am I going to find it blah blah blah blah the story that our head spins. That property was just appraised, we bought it for 350 put in another four, five into it and we keep re-investing the money each week that we get from rentals back into the property. It was just a appraised for over two million in three and a half years and it rents for $12,000 a week.

 

[00:39:46] Jon: Wow. That’s cool.

 

[00:39:46] Gail: That’s just to give you an idea. I’m not saying that to brag I’m saying that to let you know that if you’re scared of taking that next step, do it. What’s the worst that could happen? Your whole learning experience and from that we said, “Okay, what makes Glacier Bear so special?” Cause it’s the only five star, luxury accommodation in the entire 1.2 million acres of Glacier National Park. So it is super… there’s only a hundred homes in the whole park so it’s a very elite group that comes there but we have multi-generational families and our biggest complaint we get… our only complaint we get is “I wish you had more of these.” So I started thinking about March of last year, “Alright, how can I recreate this?” well you can’t just go buy a land in the Glacier. The property that we bought was the first property that had sold in the last 27 years, that’s how rare something like that comes on the market and so we were looking at this, where can we find something else that’s unique? That’s not a box in a box, big condo, little condo, the whole thing pluck next to the same thing. I wanted something unique and different and I thought, “Let’s build some treehouses. Let’s have fun. Let’s do something that hasn’t yet been done in this way.” So I started looking for large parcels and ended up with smaller a parcel but it was the single parcel on Whitefish Mountain Resort which is just voted in the Top 10 Ski Resorts in the country and these things have captured the imagination everyone who sees them it’s like the talk of the town right now, it’s kind of funny that when people say, “Oh My God! You’re the crazy treehouse lady” and it’s like, “Yeah I’m the crazy treehouse lady” and I got to tell you Jon, I did it again and what I mean by that is I went into this thing saying, “Okay, we’ll spend $700,000 and we’ll put two on this one, two on this one and three on that one and we’ll be done with that after we buy the land and we’ll be in to this for three houses for a million.” We’re more than double that already and you can see we’re not finished yet.

 

There are nights that I wake up going, “How am I going to finish this?” and then I just have to laugh at myself, it’s kind of like the big me and the little me and that little scared little girl inside is the one going, “Oh my gosh” and then I have to say, “But wait a minute” that’s when I walk into my gratitude wall and I look at all the things that I used to be on my vision board that are now on this huge wall and I can say, “I remember when that one like Glacier. I remember when I was concerned about that and it resolved itself. I can remember when I needed that and it resolved itself” and the energy shifts from fear to taking those deep breaths and going, “Yes, yes, yes!”

 

It’s the same if I go back to Iraq. If you had told me I had to accomplish that I would have no idea how I would have done that but the great thing about it is if I know what I want, I know why I want it. I think the universe, God, however you look at it gives you exactly what you need at the time that you need it and shows up in a better way than I could consciously have planned and I’m hoping the same thing holds true on Snow Bear, that’s the treehouses and that we will find a way to finish this and this will be another great success but  again I keep going back to Gay Hendricks if you’re not a little bit scared, you’re not playing big enough and I woke up the other night and I laughed and I looked up at the sky and I just said, “Hey Gay, I just want you to know I’m playing big enough” because there are still those moments people say, ” Oh my gosh you have it so easy now where you are” and it’s like you have no idea.

 

There are still those tense moments of “How?” and I have to consciously remind myself, “How is that in my domain? That’ God’s worry,that’s not mine” let go of the “How?” because when the greatest things in my life have happened it’s when I let go of the “How?”

 

[00:43:32] Jon: Gail, this is awesome. I’m going to tell you I got a couple of text messages during our conversation here and I have a feeling that the boat cabins and possibly the ski cabins… I have a feeling those are going to get booked really quickly.

 

[00:43:48] Gail: Fantastic. We sincerely welcome you. You’re going to meet just incredible people and not even just the ones that we bring, the other people on this boat. It’s an international group. One of the things I love about Sea Dream going back to that one is on the two times we’ve gone as Americans we’ve been the minority and that is… it’s a Norwegian company but that is something really special to me and if any of you have health concerns I also want to mention when you get to the dining room for dinner at night, you have basically your own personal chef. There is an entire gourmet menu that you can choose from or you can choose anything not on the menu, you can have surf and turf every night with champagne and that’s all included but then there is an entire menu that’s also raw and vegan and yoga classes and deep breathing exercises and it just goes on and on and so it’s one of those places that if you want something… we had one guy one morning at breakfast said, “You guys don’t have any banana bread?” the next morning there were 16 loaves of banana bread. It just happened… it just solves whatever you need and so for me to have the magic happen I cannot think of a more magical setting to be in than on Sea Dream.

 

[00:45:06] Jon: Wow. That is so cool. Hey…

 

[00:45:08] Gail: Yeah. So I’m totally open to any questions you guys have, Jon.

 

[00:45:11] Jon: Yeah well I’d like to invite at this point anyone who’s here to engage with Gail, questions, comments, anything you want to do to share. I think all of you are muted out so you have to on your own figure out how to un-mute but anyone who wants to ask any questions please and Gail while they might be thinking of that I just want to again thank you for being here and inspiring us. You set an example, the way that you lived and it’s so clear how authentically it just is who you are and for me that’s really inspiring and I am also appreciative that you give me permission to play big and to be afraid and to realize that… like you said the difference between fear and excitement sometimes it’s just whether or not I’m breathing.

 

[00:45:55] Gail: Exactly. You know Jon it’s…

 

[00:45:46] Jon: I love that.

 

[00:45:47] Gail: It’s real clear here on Montana I have come to the conclusion that there’s really… unless I’m being chased by a grizzly bear or a saber-toothed tiger, there’s really nothing else out there that scares me on that level but yet that’s still encoded in our DNA as humans, that’s survival instinct that we think “Oh my gosh I’m not going to be able to x” pay the rent, pay the mortgage, do whatever and the same as if a grizzly bear is chasing us but it’s not, that’s when you have to stop and turn around and look at it and say, “What’s the worst that could happen?” If that happened in this too, there is blessing. I’ll end up shucking oysters, shipping on the boat in the keys you know we’ll figure it out. Stop trying to worry about everything that could happen and instead start celebrating “what if it does happen? What if it does goes the right way? What if Snow Bear is booked out for the next three years in the next six months? Wow what does that look like?” and the more we focused on that the more that grows. What we focus on grows we all know this. So if you are going to focus on something, focus on the good not what you are afraid of.

 

[00:47:03] Jon: It’s cool. Any questions for Gail?

 

[00:47:06] Mike: Hey. I have an easy question. Gail, what ski resort in Montana will those cabins be at?

 

[00:47:14] Gail: If you go to snowbearchalets.com, you will see it is on Whitefish Mountain Resort and Whitefish Mountain, USA Today and Ski Magazine both put it in the top, I think it was number nine on Ski Magazine and number 11 on USA Today’s Poles of the best ski resorts. It is a phenomenal secret so don’t tell a whole lot of people in that…

 

[00:47:38] Mike: I’m not going to tell anyone.

 

[00:47:40] Gail: We ski right to the chair lift right, get right on and go smack up the mountain and so it is… I mean I lived in Colorado and I’ve skied all over Colorado and lived in Park City for seven years. Park City you plan on a 45 minute wait, they have entertainers to entertain you while you are in line, here you just don’t have lines. So it’s Whitefish Mountain Ski Resort.

 

[00:48:01] Mike: Oh man I’ll take a year for the next 10 years.

 

[00:48:03] Gail: You may have it. When are you coming from?

 

[00:48:05] Mike: And I’ll take all 14 cabins on your boat too.

 

[00:48:10] Gail: Absolutely. I would really encourage you. Think of who is the most amazing person that you personally know and call them and bring them with you. And if you have three friends that you can’t decide which is the most amazing, ring all three of them. I can always go back to Sea Dream and say, “Can we kick the other people off the boat and fill the whole thing?.” So let that be a problem. We would welcome it. Thank you.

 

[00:48:05] Mike: Awesome. Thanks.

 

[00:48:38] Gail: Sure.

 

[00:48:39] Danica: I just wanna thank you for sharing. This is Danica.

 

[00:48:41] Gail: Hi Danica.

 

[00:48:45] Danica: Hi. I just wanna say you are the epitome of living out loud. In fact if you were to look those words up in the dictionary, you’d see Gail Goodwin for sure. I wonder did you mention the dates of the trip?

 

[00:49:00] Gail: It’s April 8 through April 15, 2018 and I’m underlining not 17, 18. So it’s’ more than a year from now. In order to take this many people, we have to book that far in advance.

 

[00:49:17] Danica: Okay.

 

[00:49:18] Jon: Yeah. We will send out a summary of the video and some key ideas you shared and we’ll put the links for everything on the facebook group just to make it easy.

 

[00:49:27] Dianna: Hey Gail, this is Dianna. I just wanted to tell you how grateful I am that you spent this morning with us. I am so inspired. You gave this a real shot in the old spirit. There are so many things, I have to line up those sticky notes around my computer right now from everything that you said. I just so appreciative of your energy. I felt you through the camera. It was really coming through loud through loud and clear and I just wanted to say thank you before I stepped up because it really was amazing.

 

[00:50:01] Gail: Can I add one more thing.

 

[00:50:02] Dianna: Please do.

 

[00:50:03] Gail: You reminded me of it when you said sticky notes. I have a girlfriend one of our luminaries named, Nikki. And Nikki was always of with the belief that good things always happen to somebody else. I can’t do that. Who am I to play that big? Who am I to do that? Her grandfather gave her a bunch of sticky notes and the suggestion write, why not me? And she plastered them all over her house and in the next two years raised $7.4 million online in her business and donated it to a charity for orphans in Mexico. I love that story because the only thing that shifted, she did nothing different except put in her head the belief that, why not me. At least have one sticky note to your pile that says, why not me.

 

[00:50:51] Dianna: It’s going down right now. I have to say I feel like and again. It’s so wonderful. I think what you’ve done for all of us, there’s just moment that I think you made us all feel like you were talking directly to us and yet it was a universal thing. Like I know for sure it wasn’t just me you were speaking to but it spoke so directly to me and it just felt like that. Thank you so much, my friend. I am so sad, I have to get up before you finished. But I just want to say that before I left.

 

[00:51:19] Gail: Go make your day rock.

 

[00:51:26] Jon: Dianna, I know you’re about to jump off but I’ll just say this as you leave with everybody. Can all of you help me because there is 35 other QLMers, many of them are planning to watch the recording. Some of them just missed all our announcements it all that’s okay. Deanna, when you leave, all of you go close within our QUL group, any value or how awesome this was today. Just to remind people that, hey they should go listen to this, in the way of serving them.

 

[00:51:50] Gail: Or in this case, they’re literally going to miss the boat.

 

[00:51:53] Jon: They’re gonna miss the boat! They will miss the boat.

 

[00:51:58] Dianna: I had fun guys. Thank you so much.

 

[00:52:00] Gail: You’re welcome.

 

[00:52:02] Jon: We’ve got time for another question for Gail here. Brianna, I know you’re itching to say something right now. I could tell.

 

[00:52:09] Brianna: There are little things going on in my head. I’m just so grateful for this opportunity. I’ve been following what you’ve been doing for years and hear the backstory on how this all came together is really inspiring because in our group we’re often asked to step up and play bigger but you’re an example of what we should all be striving to do for real. I am really grateful, JB for you putting this together. I feel like I have tons of questions that I’m going to wait to ask them all on boat which I’m for sure is gonna go on.

 

 

[00:52:39] Gail: Yay.

 

[00:52:40] Brianna: Not even a question. I will see you.

 

[00:52:43] Gail: Excellent. I look forward to that. Remember we only have two weeks at these prices. If you were serious you may have to call me or text me or email me and we’ll connect.

 

00:52:56] Brianna: Super

 

[00:52:57] Gail: How fun.

 

[00:52:59] Jon: Awesome.

 

[00:53:00] Gail: Oh Jon. I should also mention, I don’t have the rooms booked yet but after the Barbados’ trip from April 15th for another 13 days we are staying on the boat and returning it to Lisbon, Portugal and doing the transatlantic crossing.

 

[00:53:14] Jon: The bonus. The bonus round.

 

[00:53:15] Gail: Exactly. So if anybody just decides that, hey I wanna stay on and do that too. Let me know and that ends up being it’s less than $3,000 because the boat doesn’t have to pay port fees. So I figured I’m gonna write, I’m gonna relax, I’m gonna read. It’s down time for me to just travel across the ocean and I’ve never done it before this past November. It was the coolest thing I’ve ever done for 10 days. We didn’t see a bird. We didn’t see anything. Not a ship. No sign of life. Just us, out in the middle of the ocean. When it’s a nice day, they stopped the boat and you get to get out and play with the jet skis and the boat toys and the Hobie cats and whatever in 10,000 feet of water and swim in the middle of the Atlantic. That’s kinda of a cool opportunity so if you’re interested in that part, let me know.

 

[00:54:04] Jon: Mike I bet if you tried really hard you could touch the bottom.

 

[00:54:16] Gail: If we are here to make a big difference, we are here to play big also and to do it with other people who are like-minded.

 

[00:54:23] Jon: Gail, on behalf of everyone here live and many who are going to watch this recorded over the next few days. Thank you. This was really cool. So great to bring you into this world. It’s really neat too that our original connection was Hal and that this mastermind started through as community. He and I run in together and I will just acknowledge for everybody I do talk with Hal everyday. We all know he is battling his own battles right now and he is doing really well. He is in good spirits. He is in a relatively good place all things considering.

 

[00:54:58] Gail: We will be sending him lots of love and healing wishes and a lot of gratitude also to Hal for the connection to you, Jon.

 

[00:55:04] Jon: Awesome. Thanks, Gail. Take care. Bye, everybody. Take care, everyone.

 

[00:55:07] Gail: Thank you for having me.

 

[00:55:08] Jon: Bye.

 

[00:55:09] Gail: Thank you.
[END]